A Commitment to Fitness: UAB and Lakeshore team up to find ways to improve exercise for physically disabled people.

View full sizeProject Coordinator/Research Assistant Katie Yamamoto and Research Assistant Kelsey Stamps work with participant Bob McKenna. "My interest in Tai Chi led me to look for the benefits in exercise among people who are handicapped or injured, but not athletes," McKenna says. "I'm interested in how the mind, body and spirit are connected, and I was really interested to see if science could be used to quantify that connection." (Photo by Nik Layman)

By Cary Estes

Photos by Nik Layman and courtesy of Steve Wood, UAB Public Relations and Marketing

For decades, Americans have been inundated with slogans and messages promoting the importance of physical activity. From “No pain, no gain” to “Just do it,” we have long been encouraged to exercise, even by the federal government.

But “just doing it” is not easy for people with physical disabilities. And in many cases, they are the ones who need the exercise the most. “People who come out of physical rehabilitation will immediately start a decline in all the gains that they’ve made as soon as they get home if they don’t find some ongoing way to stay active,” says Jeff Underwood, president of the Lakeshore Foundation, which for nearly 30 years has promoted physical activity for people with disabilities.

One of the problems is that there has been a limited amount of research conducted on exercise for the physically disabled. Studies have concluded that walking 10,000 steps per day is a recommended goal for improving physical health. But what if a person is in a wheelchair, or if their walking ability is restricted because of a stroke or Parkinson’s disease? For those people, what is the equivalent of 10,000 steps per day?

The Lakeshore Foundation and UAB hope to find the answer to that and other questions involving health outcomes among disabled people through a new collaboration made possible by a $6-million, five-year grant from the National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research. The goal is to make it easier for people with disabilities to commit to some sort of exercise program, and to be more productive once they do.

View full sizeLakeshore Foundation President Jeff Underwood and James Rimmer, Ph.D., of the UAB School of Health Professions (Photo courtesy of Steve Wood, UAB Public Relations and Marketing)

“When you look at the millions of dollars that the federal government has spent over the past 60 years in promoting the importance of physical activity, people with disabilities have been excluded,” says James Rimmer, Ph.D., the Lakeshore Foundation Endowed Chair in Health Promotion and Rehabilitation Sciences at the UAB School of Health Professions, who is leading the research collaborative. “Lakeshore recognized that we need to have studies with an element of inclusion. And there’s no better place to do that than at a place like Lakeshore, where they embrace the culture of physical activity among people with disabilities. All I’m doing is filling in the pieces with the right kind of research.”

Rimmer says the research will focus on four areas: accessibility to exercise facilities and the ability to use exercise equipment; ways to achieve the maximum benefits from physical activity; the ability to participate in group exercise such as basketball and yoga; and the willingness to adhere to exercise programs, especially without the social cohesion of having exercise partners. Patients at Lakeshore Rehabilitation Hospital and participants in the programs offered by the Lakeshore Foundation will be able to volunteer for the various research projects, providing Rimmer and his team with more than 40 different types of disabilities to study.

“We’ll have the research take place at Lakeshore, and then filter it back out to the world in terms of training, education, science, research and development,” Rimmer says. “We can do studies here that are very difficult to do anywhere else in the country.”

Underwood says the collaboration is bringing national attention to Birmingham. “People who are interested in this kind of work are now saying, ‘We need to find out what’s going on in Birmingham,’ ” Underwood says. “Our program partners, particular on the military side, are very interested is this research collaborative. People at places like Walter Reed (National Military Medical Center) are always looking for better techniques. It’s yet another thing we can be very proud of in this community.

“And we’re just at the very beginning of knowing what the potential is of this collaborative. It’s the power of partnership, the spirit of cooperation between UAB and Lakeshore. It’s a very powerful combination. We can have an impact from Birmingham both nationally and internationally. We can put science behind the programs, disseminate what we’ve learned as broadly as we can, and impact people around the world.”